Taking Back MY Life Microsoft Style - booyah!
Okay, before I begin this post I must encourage my good *nix peeps to close their eyes ... or have a couple of drinks ... or put on their "grain of salt" hats. Please remember the world I live in - the office dimension ... Microsoft land. You must not judge me as I am only a product of my surroundings ;)
I have been reading copious materials about how to organize my life and priorities using Office 2007 magix (see book references below). In my excitement to "hiya!" take back my life, I have found myself once again buying into the Microsoft marketing voodoo.
First, let me make a statement, a controversial statement that may make me vulnerable to my good *nix loving friends. I love Microsoft, I do ... I love the way that there are at least 5 ways to do everything in Microsoft programs, I love how everywhere you turn there is some kind of MS propaganda, I love that MS products all work together, I love that when you pick up some MS training material there is always at least 10% marketing for other MS products. The fact the Microsoft is a huge evil genius monopoly actually gives me chills. CHILLS. I suppose it should be said at this point that I am also the person who feels for the "bad" characters in all story lines ... often seeing their points of view much more clearly than the sympathetic good-ees. Whatevs ... I digress.
So, in my gathering resources re: SharePoint I stumbled upon the book referenced above ... and as a certified MS - cult member it was my duty to purchase, read, and then attempt to implement the wise words written within. I read the book over a weekend, took notes even ... and followed along by diligently completing the exercises necessary to TAKE BACK MY LIFE. By the end of the book I had reduced my inbox to 3 items (I swear, down from over 500), scheduled out the next couple of weeks with time to complete tasks. Re-evaluated some of my commitments ... and ended up with a categorized task list of over 80 actions - urgh. Now, a couple of weeks later my inbox is back up to 250 and 30 of those actions are overdue. Oh, and I also shelled out some bucks to by a new Windows Mobile device to replace my Blackberry ... so that I could appropriately manage actions on the go. (blush - don't tell my husband - I just can't pass up a new toy ... I mean, tool).
I'm going to try again with the concepts in the book, like all things worth doing it will take work and commitment to truly get the greatest benefits out of a productivity plan like what is laid out in the book. Oh, and I have to do something to justify the new fancy-smansh phone I shelled out for :)
ps. new phone: T-Mobile Wing, runs on Windows Mobile 6 ... review to come.
2 comments:
Very cool! As someone who was an ex Mac Addict many years ago, then drank the Koolaid many years ago and got to fulfill my lifelong dream by working for "the dark side." ;-) I say don't be ashamed. For all the attacks on MSFT it i one of the most diverse groups of people (you should see see the internal email aliases discussions) and not a mindless evil empire. The compamy is one of the most generous in charitable giving, and our chairman now focuses most of his energy on such "evil" pursuits as helping education and addressig world hunger (remember the Time Magazine cover with his wife, Bono, and him?) Last time I looked I havent heard of such philanthropy by Steve J., or Larry E., etc.
At any rate the book sounds great and I need to pick up a copy and check it out myself! :-)
Thanks for passing the review along!
The organization sounds amazing. I think I would need the book, some therapy, and a week of 36 hour days.
Sometime, I hope you get a chance to use iLife and iWork. Apple does a pretty good job of making applications that work together, and it would be cool for you to see another way of accomplishing a lot of the same tasks that you do in Office, plus iLife would let you lay down some groovy tracks with Garageband, put up a pretty groovy web site and slap together a gnarly video.
I'll get Vista and Office 2007 loaded up before too long and see if I'm overcome with warm fuzzies too.
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